Textbook authors generally present the Holocaust in the context of a political history of the Second World War (of the rise of the National Socialist Party, of Hitler, of nationalism, expansionism and appeasement), but also emphasize state racial policy, Hitler’s personal beliefs,
totalitarianism, and concentration and extermination camps, while in some cases drawing on historiographical models such as a ‘breach in civilization’ (in Chinese and Indian textbooks) and stages of ‘deportation’, ‘concentration’ and ‘extermination’ (in the Ivorian textbook) which correspond to the concepts found in
Dan Diner’s and
Raul Hilberg’s work on the Holocaust.
Conceptualizations of the Holocaust The majority of textbooks in all countries name the event as the ‘Holocaust’, to which are added, in the course of the presentations, paraphrases of the event in terms of, for example, ‘discrimination against Jewish people, sent to concentration camps’ (in a Japanese textbook) or, characteristically, as ‘systematic killings’, ‘extermination’, ‘systematic genocide’, the ‘Final Solution’ and ‘massacres’ (in South African textbooks). The largely descriptive nature of history textbooks means that they generally adopt inclusive definitions of the event, that is, definitions which derive from the details of the event rather than from an exclusive a priori definition. Exceptions to this general rule are cases in which the Holocaust is not named or alluded to euphemistically, as in one Indian textbook, or in which it is paraphrased in partial terms, as in Egyptian and Syrian textbooks.
Aims, motives and responsibilities of protagonists Most commonly, in almost all countries, the personalization of the event (its explanation as stemming from the personal convictions of one person) in relation to Hitler is a central interpretative paradigm. The textbook currently used in Namibian schools is characteristic of this technique. In this book, the Holocaust is dealt with in a section entitled ‘antisemitism’, on the first page of which the word ‘Hitler’ appears in a box in the middle of the page from which arrows point towards party organizations; the authors describe Hitler’s personal ‘determination to remove Jews from Germany’. English textbooks also refer to Hitler’s irrational hatred of the Jews and to his personal desire for revenge against Jews.
Causes The most frequently named cause of the Holocaust is ideology (
racism,
antisemitism,
totalitarianism,
authoritarianism,
militarism,
capitalism,
fascism). Textbooks in Brazil, Germany, Côte d’Ivoire, Japan, Republic of Moldova and Rwanda also qualify the expansionist policy of Nazi Germany as a form of colonialism.
Historiographical paradigms Most textbook authors make use of one or more historiographical paradigms in order to explain the Holocaust. The two most common, and largely shared, paradigms are the identification of categories of protagonists in terms of
perpetrators, victims, and bystanders, and the attribution of
moral responsibility to one or more individuals in what has become known as ‘intentionalism’. Most textbooks in this survey conceive of protagonists as either perpetrators or victims, in addition to those who resisted the regime and, occasionally, bystanders and/or rescuers. No textbooks explore ambivalent roles beyond these categories. In some cases, as in French and Ivorian textbooks, Hilberg’s stages of the Holocaust, defined as identification, concentration and deportation, are reflected in textbook representations. Other paradigms include: the ‘breach of civilization’ ascribed to Dan Diner, which is echoed in textbooks in China and India; the behaviour of ‘ordinary Germans’ ascribed to Daniel Goldhagen in English textbooks; the effects of bureaucratization ascribed to
Zygmunt Bauman, featured in textbooks in Argentina; the effects of peer pressure ascribed to
Christopher Browning, discussed in textbooks in the USA;
cumulative radicalization or functionalism ascribed to
Hans Mommsen, raised in textbooks in England; and references to colonial aspects underpinning the Holocaust, made in textbooks from Brazil, Germany, Japan and Republic of Moldova. The large variety of historiographical authorities and works referred to in order to explain the event show that there is little consensus between textbook authors over explanatory models.
Metanarratives A small number of textbooks, in Argentina, Poland, Spain and the USA, for example, complement their presentations of the history of the Holocaust with meta-historical commentaries in the form of glossaries of historic terms. Meta-narrative approaches are pedagogically effective when explaining the political expediency of commemorations of the Holocaust via monuments or in international relations, as in textbooks from Argentina, Germany, India and the Russian Federation. They also encourage a critical approach to such phenomena as the personality cult surrounding Hitler, as outlined in the Salvadorian textbook in our sample. In exceptional cases, authors not only apply historiographical paradigms, but also discuss their merits, as in the sketches of
Hannah Arendt’s, Zygmunt Bauman’s and
Daniel Goldhagen’s explanations of the Holocaust in Argentinian textbooks.
Comparisons Comparisons between the Holocaust and other mass atrocities or genocides are often alluded to but not explained. Usage of the terms ‘terror’ and ‘cleansing’ in some Polish textbooks to describe historically different events detracts from their historical specificities. Similarly, the use of the term ‘terrorist’ to describe Hitler in one Brazilian textbook, ‘terror’ to describe the Holocaust in one German textbook, or even the definition of
Zionist forces in Palestine as Jewish ‘terror groups’ in one Iraqi textbook lend themselves to semantic confusion if not anachronism. Similar semantic confusion arises when the term ‘extermination’ is used to describe the function of the Gulag in one Brazilian textbook or when a Belarusian textbook inaccurately claims that the National Socialist regime planned the ‘extermination of the Soviet people’, or when different regimes are described collectively as ‘totalitarian’ in Argentinian, Brazilian, French, Moldovan, Polish, Spanish, and briefly in English and Rwandan textbooks. The use of the term ‘fascism’ to describe the German and Japanese authorities during the Second World War and the use of the term ‘genocide’ (datusha) in Chinese textbooks to refer to crimes committed by both the Japanese forces in Nanjing and the National Socialists in the Holocaust detract from historical distinctions. Comparisons are also evoked by the use of images. The juxtaposition of images of different events, such as the images of
Auschwitz and the
Nanjing massacre in one French textbook, or of Dresden and Hiroshima in another French textbook, the association of suffering during the Holocaust with suffering caused by the atomic bomb in Hiroshima in one Ivorian textbook, or the association of Auschwitz and life under apartheid in one South African textbook, similarly obscure historical differences rather than explaining them comparatively. While such indiscriminate use of terms and imagery to describe different historical events is commonplace, and while textbooks in some countries allude to similarities by juxtaposing images or textual association, some textbooks in Poland and Argentina, for example, avoid relativizing the Holocaust by providing clear explanations of the comparable motives, methods and aims of the perpetrators of different mass crimes. == Narrative techniques ==